January 1, 2011 (Vol. 31, No. 1)

URL:
http://vega.sanger.ac.uk

Rating:
Strong Points: Easy-to-navigate chromosomes to browse sequences
Weak Points: The navigation bar varies, making for some cumbersome site-surfing

Summary:

Alas, a researcher’s work is never done. Take, for instance, the sequencing of entire genomes. Yes, it’s a victory in and of itself, but there is so much more to do afterwards in terms of annotation! Thankfully there are research groups dedicated to the task, such as the HAVANA group at the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute. After hours upon hours of labor, the HAVANA researchers have created the Vertebrate Genome Annotation (VEGA), a repository for “high quality manual annotation of vertebrate finished genome sequence.” The represented species are: human, mouse, zebrafish, gorilla, pig, dog, and (don’t ask me why) wallaby. One can browse the annotations by chromosome, or one can search by gene name. There is also a “comparative analysis” feature that provides pairwise alignment for specific genomic regions between species. If users wish to manage personal datasets, they can register for an account.

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